Courtroom workers put their hands over their mouths as a judge stood, hands clasped, watching surveillance footage Tuesday from a home where four pit bulls mauled a 4-year-old Detroit boy to death in the backyard.

The defendant, Geneke Lyons, 41, watched for a few minutes then pointed his face downward in 36th District Court. He's charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and possessing dangerous animals causing death in connection with the Dec. 2 mauling on Detroit's west side.

Xavier Strickland was walking with his mother Lucille Strickland when the four dogs attacked at about 12:30 p.m. on Baylis Street near the John C. Lodge freeway. The unrestrained dogs rushed at them, and the mother fell on the boy and was bitten on her ear, leg and back. She was getting up when the dogs grabbed Xavier, pulling him away from here, and underneath a fence where they tore at his body.

For 16 minutes at Lyons' Tuesday afternoon preliminary examination, the nearly-full gallery of people who couldn't see the TV screen sat in silence as the video played with no sound for the judge to see. Earlier, witnesses had testified about what they saw and heard that day.

"(A) woman was on the grass crying, upset and holding her leg," Cherisse Williams, a neighbor, testified. "When I looked at her she looked up at me she said, 'Please help me. Dogs have my baby.' And she pointed to the house at the corner."

Xavier Strickland,4, was mauled by four pit bulls.(Photo: Family photo)

Williams ran to the nearby house, where she saw the growling dogs surrounding the child, who wasn't making any sounds, inside the fence. She grabbed mace out of her vehicle and came back and sprayed the dogs, who had started barking and growling at her. Williams said she sprayed one dog in the face, "and the mace just made it worse," as the dog became more aggressive.

Then police arrived, and she pleaded with them to save the boy.

"(An officer) snatches the fence open, pulls his pistol out and immediately starts shooting the dogs," she said, adding that he fired at least four or five shots.

What Williams saw when the dogs backed off from the boy was so overwhelming, it caused her to leave the scene: The pit bulls had disemboweled the child, she said.

The police sergeant shot and killed three of the dogs, and a fourth was later euthanized.

The Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office ruled the death an accident and found that Xavier had died of multiple puncture wounds.

36th District Court Judge Lydia Nance-Adams said Lyons' preliminary examination is to continue Wednesday morning. As the video played, the judge maintained her composure while one security guard put his hands to his eyes and looked down, and the stenographer put her hands, palms open, over her mouth for several minutes.

Mark Bernstein, who's representing Xavier's parents in a civil suit, was in the courtroom on Tuesday. He described the surveillance footage as "16 minutes of horror" and said he'd seen a small part of it. He said the video is likely to be played in trial.

"When that happens, there will be both a sense of outrage -- appropriately, the only human, decent reaction -- and then I would hope there would be a sense of challenge that comes to this community to address this issue in a meaningful, impactful way," he said.

Bernstein said people who see the video should feel challenged to "make sure that this never, ever, ever happens again, to another child in this city or anywhere."

He also said that it's not the dogs, but the owner of the dogs, who's guilty.

Attorneys said afterward that Lyons had voluntarily handed over the surveillance video to police. He had a number of supporters in the courtroom gallery. And in an unusual move, Assistant Prosecuter Parisa Kiani had Nance-Adams ask the first and last name of everyone observing the court proceedings in the gallery.

Kiani said she was concerned that the defense might later call them as witnesses. Defense attorney Francisco Villarruel objected, saying it was inappropriate, but the judge went ahead and asked, one-by-one, everyone's name for the record.